Salaries of Technical Writers

Technical writers are those creative souls who write technical reports, articles and informative content on a wide range of topics. Technical writers employ their writing skills to bring structure to information so that people can comprehend it. The variety of topics for technical writers is a vast universe which contains fields like glass making, automobiles, computer programming, quilting, equipment installation manuals and much more. Technical writers write manuals, installation guides, reports, and articles on a technical topic like gear box assembly for a four wheel drive. They need to be articulate, well-structured, crisp and fluff free so that the reader can clearly understand the information presented in the text.

After reading about the arduous tasks that these writers do you must be wondering how much are they paid? What are the salaries for technical writers?

A lot of factors go into deciding the salaries for technical writers. Most technical writers are required to be college graduates as the information they deal with is pretty complex and needs a lot of processing. Experience in the industry relevant to the subject matter, familiarity with the subject matter and overall writing skills are also factored in the salaries of technical writers. As per the Occupational Outlook Handbook by U.S. government, technical writers usually make between $38,000 to $170,000 annually including bonuses and profit sharing. The median salary was found to be about $69,850 with a 10% increment project in the next 10 years. This translates to about $33.58 per hour which is a respectable amount of money. While most entry level technical writers at least had a Bachelor’s degree, they had less than 5 years of experience. Hence, Technical writing is a good job with a decent pay grade. The biggest benefit of technical writing is one can choose the hours one wants to put in and comfortably work as a freelancer.